Fortnite: cryptocurrency not being accepted after all – at least for the time being…

An error led to a cryptocurrency option being enabled for the purchase of Fortnite goodies – at least for now…

UPDATE: Since this story first landed, Epic Games has explained that the Fortnite store accepting the cryptocurrency Monero was not deliberate. On Twitter, the company’s Tim Sweeney explained that “Fortnite’s brief foray into crypto was accidental. We worked with a partner to open a merchandise store, and somewhere along the way Monero payment was enabled”.

But as the conversation progressed, he did confirm that Epic Games was open to crypto further down the line…

Googling this, there’s quite a rumor mill out there. No, Epic doesn’t have any cryptocurrency partners and aren’t in any crypto partnership discussions with anyone. We do read lots of papers and talk to smart people to learn more in anticipation of an eventual intercept.

Sweeney and Epic are keeping their options open going forward. For the moment, though, you can’t buy Fortnite stuff using Monero…

Here’s our original story from January 2nd

The official merchandise store of wildly popular online shooter, Fortnite, has begun to accept cryptocurrency payments – but only in Monero, for now.

According to a post on Reddit, confirmed by Monero’s official Twitter account, players of Epic Games’ free-to-play, micro-purchase driven game can now get their tie-in fix using the privacy coin, which is the first cryptocurrency supported by its busy online store, known as Retail Row after a location in the game.

The Monero payment option is now offered alongside Credit/Debit Card, PayPal and Google Pay options at the end of transactions, and is facilitated by the GloBee cryptocurrency payments service – which settles payments with traders instantaneously in order to eliminate price fluctuation problems for stores using it. It charges a 1% fee to traders for every transaction it processes.

While GloBee can process Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), XRP and Dogecoin (DOGE) for its users, it appears that Fortnite’s team has plumped for Monero as the first option. In responses to his announcement of the news on Twitter, Monero’s lead dev Riccardo Spagni said that’s due to the Epic Games team’s concerns regarding privacy – but implied that he has been working with Epic on the integration, and pushing for other crypto option to be added as well.

The store provider is very interested in LN, and we’re pushing hard to get them to add that to the list. Right now they’ve only enabled Monero, even though they have a number of options (including bech32-enabled Bitcoin).

Currently, the crypto can only be used to purchase Fortnite-related merchandise such as T-Shirts, and a quite fetching Durr Burger Onesie (again referencing a location on the games fictional island location). It cannot be used for the much more core functionality of making in game purchases or acquiring the games own electronic currency, known as V-bucks.

Despite this rather peripheral roll-out, the news has appeared to drive a positive price move for Monero. However, while it’s ranked as the 13th coin by size of market capitalisation according to CryptoCompare with a circulating value of around $830m, it only ranks as the 31st coin by 24hr trading volume on the data site’s charts with just $6m-worth changing hands (compared to ZCash’s $90m+, Litecoin’s 24hr vol of $175m, and the $1bn of Bitcoin traded).

Its aggregated price as measured by the CryptoCompare Index has seen it benefit from a 6%+ lift in that period, though. It is now worth just under $50 per coin following gains that mark it as the biggest mover among 35 of the most traded coins over the last 24hrs, and 9th of all coins tracked by CryptoCompare. It has the third biggest 24hr trading volume among the Top 10 biggest price gainers over the last day.